The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.
A number of internet publishing business models exist. One publishing business model includes three players: advertisers, market researchers and publishers. Publishers create web sites that provide content which generates user traffic. User traffic attracts advertisers and allows publishers to sell advertisement space. Advertisements are typically stored on a central ad server. The ad server can either be part of a large advertisement network, or managed by the publisher. User traffic also attracts market researchers, who also may use advertisement space for conducting surveys.
For the purpose of explanation, reference shall be made to a hypothetical web publisher WePublish. In order to maximize revenue, the web site of WePublish can run a number advertisement campaigns and research initiatives concurrently. One such advertisement campaign AC1 could be created by a hypothetical advertiser WeAdvertise, hired by a car manufacturer. The WeAdvertise ad campaign for the car manufacturer may include three advertisements: AD1, AD2 and AD3. To measure the effectiveness of the advertisement campaign, the car manufacturer may hire a hypothetical market research firm WeResearch to conduct a survey SV1 to measure the effectiveness of the ad campaign.
Advertisement effectiveness can be measured by administering a survey to two groups of people: a test group and a control group. The test group has seen one or more advertisements from the ad campaign under study, while the control group has not. The difference between how the two groups answer the survey indicates the advertisement campaign's effectiveness. An ad campaign whose effectiveness is being measured by a survey is referred to herein as “measured campaign”.
To test the effectiveness of survey SV1, WeResearch must accurately assign the takers of the survey SV1 to either the control group or the test group. One technique that market research companies may use to determine whether to assign a survey taker to the test group or the control group is to use a “tracking tag” to place “tracking cookies” on the machines of users that have been exposed to the advertisements of a measured campaign.
A tag is a snippet of executable code. When a tag is included in a page that is sent to a browser, the executable code of the tag typically executes when the browser decodes the page. In the case of a tracking tag, execution of the code places a tracking cookie on the machine on which the browser that decoded the page that contains the tag is executing.
For example, WeResearch may issue to WeAdvertise a tracking tag TT1 for the ad campaign AC1. Typically, one tracking tag is used per measured campaign, but sometimes multiple tracking tags are used. If an advertiser has ads for multiple measured campaigns, each measured campaign would typically have a unique tracking tag.
Advertisers insert the tracking tag for each particular measured campaign into the ads that belong to the measured campaign. In the present example, WeAdvertise would place the tracking tag TT1 into advertisements AD1, AD2 and AD3. The advertisements, including the embedded tracking tags, are then served to publishers by the ad server. The publishers include the ads in web pages sent to users by the publishers.
In the present example, WePublish would include AD1, AD2 and AD3 in web pages sent by WePublish to users. Whenever a user sees a web page that contains an advertisement that has a tracking tag for a particular ad campaign, the tracking tag places on the user's machine a cookie indicating that a user was exposed to an advertisement that belongs to that particular ad campaign. Thus, when a user views a web page from WePublish that includes any of ads AD1, AD2 and AD3, the tracking tag TT1 embedded in the ad causes a tracking cookie TC1 to be placed on the user's machine. The tracking cookie TC1 indicates that the user has been presented with an advertisement from ad campaign AC1.
To invite survey takers to take survey SV1, WeResearch creates a “survey-invitation tag” SIT1 for the survey SV1 for the ad campaign AC1. WeResearch then embeds the survey-invitation tag SIT1 in a banner B1 that does not contain any information relating to ad campaign AC1. Banner B1 may then be added into the advertisement rotation. Such empty advertisements are known as house advertisements or PSA. If a user is exposed to a house advertisement, the survey-invitation tag in the banner (1) presents to the user an invitation to take the survey associated with the survey-invitation tag, and (2) reads the user's cookie information to determine whether the user has been exposed to ads from the corresponding campaign. For example, when user are exposed to banner B1, SIT1 present the user with an invitation to take survey SV1, and read the user's cookie information to determine whether the user has been exposed to advertisements from ad campaign AC1.
At any given time, the ads that are included in the web pages that are being served by a publisher may belong to many concurrently running measured campaigns. For example, in addition to advertisements AD1, AD2 and AD3, WePublish web pages may include advertisements from many other measured campaigns AC2-AC50. Unfortunately, the existence of large numbers of concurrently-running campaigns, each of which have their own corresponding survey-invitation tag and survey, presents a number of challenges to the publisher.
For example, separate research initiatives are typically unaware of each other. Therefore, the survey invitation for each measured campaign is presented to users without regard to whether the users have received survey invitations for other measured campaigns. Consequently, some users may be served a disproportionately large number of survey invitations, while others none at all. Further, a single web page may have multiple survey invitation tags. This would make the site appear as having a large number of popups and reduce perception of site quality.
The integration and management of survey-invitation tags also presents a large burden on the web site publisher. Because every advertisement campaign and research initiative requires distinct house advertisement and survey-invitation tags, the management burden increases with the number of studies and advertisement campaigns. Moreover, because every study requires a house advertisement to embed the survey-invitation tag and recruit survey takers, there is a loss of a revenue stream to the publisher.
There is clearly a need for a system that allows efficient management of advertisement campaigns, research initiatives and their corresponding tags to reduce the programming and maintenance burden on the publisher, to allow for controlled spawning of surveys and to eliminate house advertisements to increase revenue for the publisher.